Peebles Hydro Hotel celebrates 140 years

In the heart of Scotland’s Tweed Valley, this landmark hotel began life in 1881 as the grand Peebles Hydropathic Establishment.

Set high above the town, it offered a vast range of therapeutic water treatments, using its own private water source, the Shieldgreen spring. Its purity became legendary for alleviating a wide range of ailments.

In 1905 the hotel sadly burnt down but the new Peebles Hydro was rebuilt in 1907 using reclaimed materials.

In the 1920s, tennis became a popular pastime here. The hotel had more courts than Wimbledon and hosted the Lawn Tennis Scottish Championships before the site was requisitioned as a military general hospital during the Second World War and didn’t open its doors to guests again until August 1946.

Peebles Hydro is also home of the

1881 Distillery – the UK’s largest residential Gin School.

The idea for this offshoot came about because gin and tonic was such a popular tipple with the tennis crowds, served on the lawn to those who gathered to watch the many tournaments held here in the 1930s.

The Gin School sits on what was once the hotel swimming pool and there are 26 individual copper stills with glass beakers and botanicals.

Visitors can learn about the hotel’s own 1881 gin, the water for which is sustainably sourced from that same mineral-rich spring originally famed for its rejuvenating hydrotherapy treatments.

peebleshydro.co.uk